<p>Copyright TM Forum 2005<br/></p><p><br/></p><p><b>Extended Description</b><br/></p><p><br/></p><p>The purpose of the Manage Supplier/Partner Inventory processes are twofold - establish, manage and administer the enterprise's supplier/partner inventory, as embodied in the Supplier/Partner Inventory Database, and monitor and report on the usage and access to the supplier/partner inventory, and the quality of the data maintained in it.<br/></p><p><br/></p><p>The supplier/partner inventory maintains records of all commercial arrangements with supplier/partners, and any modifications to them. It also records all details of contacts with suppliers/partners as well as commercial information, including details of S/P products and services, required to support S/PRM and other processes.<br/></p><p><br/></p><p>The supplier/partner inventory is also responsible for maintaining the association between product instances, service instances, resource instances and S/P product instances, created as a result of the S/P Requisition Management processes.<br/></p><p><br/></p><p>Responsibilities of these processes include, but are not limited to:<br/></p><p><br/></p><p>- Identifying the inventory-relevant information requirements to be captured to support the S/P Relationship Management and other processes;<br/></p><p>- Identifying, establishing and maintaining supplier/partner inventory repository facilities;<br/></p><p>- Establishing and managing the supplier/partner inventory management and information capture processes;<br/></p><p>- Managing the registration and access control processes that enable processes to create, modify, update, delete and/or download supplier/partner data to and from the supplier/partner inventory;<br/></p><p>- Ensuring the supplier/partner inventory repository accurately captures and records all identified supplier/partner details, through use of automated or manual audits;<br/></p><p>- Tracking and monitoring of the usage of, and access to, the supplier/partner inventory repository and associated costs, and reporting on the findings; and<br/></p><p>- Identifying any technical driven shortcomings of the supplier/partner inventory repository, and providing input to Resource Development & Management processes to rectify these issues.<br/></p>